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What I've been working on... (non map-based)

Hey guys.. I always claim i'm busy, but never really let on what some of my projects are... This project should be of at least a bit of interest to you guys..

I'm making a game, target platform is android.. mainly cause i can't find a free android game i like.... and 99% of free apps just have a stupid ad bar added for added annoyance.. The language is haxe NME, which is an open sourced cross platform lang, much like actionscript.

The game idea is fairly simple.. kind of an ongoing project.. i want to make the framework for an old-school dungeon crawler, titles that come to mind are might and magic 3, dungeon master 2, eye of the beholder, etc.. the faux 3d types... I want to make the engine, creation tools, and a decent free campaign... with the possibility of expanding on it and releasing the expansions for some cashola... for now tho, it's going to be completely free, just an experience builder.

At the moment i'm working on integrating a tool for animation, called spine... it makes 2d animations using bones, like 3d anim bones, but specifically for 2d sprites... similar to flash's bones.. but obv not requiring flash. the program is called Spine, by Esoteric software... here's a link, the vid on the homepage give some info on it's features... Esoteric Software

here are some screen shots of my progress thusfar... (note: not my art, these are all example exports they've provided)

here's an example of a goblin skeleton, the body is made of head, torso, arms, legs, etc.. all located and positioned through bones.

this is the same skeleton, with a different skin.. showing you some of the uses.. a completely different character, but using the same animations...

and finally a bit more complex, dragon..

next steps are to get animation working.. which has become a bit of a problem... currently reworking most of the program to parse things correctly....

its a great tool, simplifies animations, and yet cuts down the need of assets (picture a frame by frame of one of those goblin anims.. then change it's weapon... doing that would require double the frames... or, with this style bone animation, you just swap the weapon asset with another.. and you're done)

just a set on images and numbers, much faster then double, triple or even more assets to load.

so. i've kinda changed gears, i happened to test out the spine runtimes for c#, which is a different language than haxe, which is what i was originally attempting (for the cross platform support). With haxe, i was able to draw 5 or so skeletons without a significant framerate drop, and cpu usage of 30%+, usually from 60fps to like, 20 or less... that's not really plausible for creating a game... using C# (MonoGame) I was able to draw 100+ skeletons without a significant drop, not sure of the fps, but the cpu usage seems to stick at around 10%, even if i go up to 200, or even 500... The difference has made me decide to drop haxe for the moment and work with c# instead.

Along with this, I've been playing Unreal World, a finnish survival rpg where you try to stay alive in the wilderness.. picture adventure mode in df, but a bit more organized. it's rekindled my desire to create a world-based rpg, top down 2d.. so i think i might focus on that for a bit. starting with world creation.. which will be a decent challenge.